


First Page

by scribefindegil



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Crying About Craft Supplies, Family Bonding, Gen, Heart-to-Heart, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Weirdmageddon, Scrapbooks, Stan's horrible self-worth issues, The Power Of Mabel, which Mabel is not going to take sitting down
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2016-07-25
Packaged: 2018-07-26 13:54:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7576459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribefindegil/pseuds/scribefindegil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mabel was kneeling on the attic floor, her scrapbooking supplies spread out in front of her. Already, Stan could tell that something was wrong; the caps were still on all her tubes of glitter glue and the folder of stickers beside her hadn’t been opened.</p>
<p>Mabel tries to make another scrapbook for Stan before she leaves for the summer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	First Page

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a "crying about craft supplies" prompt on tumblr--request was "New Scrapbooks." Set in the week between Weirdmageddon ending and the twins leaving for home.

The attic was completely silent. Something about that felt off to him somehow. It was supposed to be full of soft humming and clicking pens at the very least. Stan paused, uncertainly, outside the doorway. The floorboards creaked under his feet. He felt like once he’d known where to step so that he could travel silently through the old house, but no longer. Not that it was a problem that Mabel knew he was coming. He didn’t know why he felt so jumpy at the thought that his movements might be heard. There was no one in the house who wanted to hurt him.

Shaking his head, Stan pushed the door open. Mabel was kneeling on the attic floor, her scrapbooking supplies spread out in front of her. Already, Stan could tell that something was wrong; the caps were still on all her tubes of glitter glue and the folder of stickers beside her hadn’t been opened. She was staring at the bright, untouched pages of an empty scrapbook, and her hands were clutching what looked like a pack of playing cards.

“Uh,” he said. “Hey . . . sweetie.”

She turned to look at him. For a moment he was afraid that she had been crying, but what he saw was almost worse. She was looking at him the way everyone else had when he’d woken up in the clearing, all heartbroken and helpless. He hated seeing that face on anyone, but out of everyone in the world it belonged on Mabel the least.

“You said you were okay,” she said quietly.

He moved to ruffle her hair. “I am okay! I’m better than okay! Look at me!” Stan grinned and spread his arms. And, astonishingly, he meant it. He felt good. He felt . . . happy. There were still blurs when he looked back at the span of his life, but he knew enough to be sure that this kind of contentment was a rare gift.

Mabel’s expression didn’t change, but she flopped backwards against his leg, wrapping her arms around it and squeezing like her life depended on it. She wouldn’t look up at him, turning her gaze back toward the blank book.

She muttered something inaudible. He bent down, sitting cross-legged on the floor and pulling his niece into his lap.

“What’s that? I’m sure your sweater heard it great, but your old Grunkle Stan’s gonna need you to speak up a little.”

“I meant before!”

“Before what?”

“Before Gravity Falls!”

Stan stiffened, and he was sure Mabel felt it because she clung on to his arm twice as tight. Still, he pressed on, “Well, you know, maybe things weren’t the greatest, but I did fine. No need to worry about—”

“You’re a liar, Grunkle Stan!”

Stan blinked. “Hey now, what’s gotten into you?”

One of Mabel’s hands found his own, and she pressed the thing she’d been holding into it. Stan looked at the pile of cards in his hand. No. Not cards. They were heavy and plastic, and he saw his own face, younger and more desperate, grinning up at him. _Stetson Pinesfield . . . Hal Forrester . . . Steve Pinington . . ._

“The scrapbook worked so well,” she said, “I was gonna make you another one. It was a surprise. And I asked all the townspeople to give me things they remembered about you, and Shandra said she did so much research for the crime broadcast that I could just have all her files, and I’m gonna get them tomorrow, but then I thought, ‘Oh no, I don’t have anything from before you got here!’”

Stan sighed. “Pumpkin . . .”

“So then I thought, ‘I bet I can find something! Dipper taught me how to do all this nerd research!’” she continued. “And at first I was just gonna try to go back in time and get my own pictures, but I couldn’t figure out how to get to the different states and anyway I think Blendin stole his time tape back, but then I thought I could find things if I looked up all your fake names and . . . I did. I found things! And they were so scary and so sad and . . . Grunkle Stan, why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you tell Grunkle Ford?”

There were gaps in his mind. Blurs, between the two times he’d lost his brother. But the snatches that he could remember were . . . well, sad and scary was an understatement.

“Look, I didn’t want you to worry,” he said. “Didn’t want my brother to worry.” That felt wrong, but he wasn’t going to dwell on why. “And it was my fault anyway, messing up Ford’s life.” That at least he knew was real. He couldn’t remember all the mistakes he’d made, but he was sure he’d made them.

“No it wasn’t!” Mabel twisted out of his arms and turned so that she could glare at him. Standing up she was barely taller than he was sitting down, and her sweater was blue and puffy and had a sloth wearing sunglasses on it. Her anger should have been funny, but Stan found himself drawing back.

“It wasn’t your fault! You messed up but that’s not supposed to ruin your life! That only happens in bad movies! In real life your family is supposed to love you and support you and let you fix things!”

“Things were different back then,” Stan tried.

“Well they shouldn’t have been!” Mabel yelled. “You were only a couple years older than Wendy! You were only like five years older than _me_! And I knew about the jail stuff, but you almost get arrested all the time here, too, I didn’t think it was . . . I didn’t think it was that bad! But they . . .” Finally her voice broke. “All the times people hurt you. Did you really think it was your fault?”

Stan stared at her. He didn’t know what to say. The answer that he knew was the real one wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She was a kid. Naïve. Didn’t know how the world worked. He’d hoped that she would stay that way for at least a little longer.

His gaze fell to the empty scrapbook.

“If I messed up would you think it was my fault?” Mabel asked. “Because I did. I messed up really badly! I trusted Bill because I thought he was Blendin and I’m the one who broke the snowglobe thingy and started everything! The world almost ended because of me!”

“That’s not . . .” Stan began. “That’s not the same. You didn’t know what you were doing—”

Mabel threw up her hands. “Neither did you! You told us it was an accident, but even if it wasn’t, you can’t say you deserve all those bad things because you made one mistake and then tell me everything’s fine! If you still love me after this your family should have still loved you too!”

She stared at him, breathing heavily. Her fists were clenched at her sides.

“Pumpkin,” he said reassuringly, “You’re better than I ever was.”

It didn’t seem to have the desire effect.

“No!” Mabel yelled. “No I’m not and I’m not going to let you be a unicorn about this!”

Stan blinked. “Um . . .”

“I’m great but that doesn’t mean that everyone else is terrible! It doesn’t mean that you’re terrible. You’re smelly and weird and your jokes are really bad and you should be nicer to your employees, but inside you’re just a . . . a sad marshmallow! And I want you to be a happy marshmallow because I love you!”

“I, uh, don’t know how I feel about being a marshmallow,” Stan said. He poked at the pudge of his belly. “Though I guess I am squishy enough for one.”

Mabel’s glare wavered. Stan poked his stomach again. “You, ah, wanna test that?”

Mabel threw herself at him with such force that he tumbled over backwards. His fez fell off and rolled away toward Dipper’s bed. He didn’t try going after it, just let Mabel squeeze him tight while he petted her hair.

“Yup,” she said after a while. “Definitely a marshmallow.”

Stan chuckled. Mabel flopped across his belly and looked him in the eye. “But don’t think you can distract me with hugs forever!”

“Listen, I’m okay now,” he said. “Really.”

“But I want you to be okay always.”

Stan sighed. “Things don’t work that way, pumpkin.”

She pouted. “Well, they should.”

They lay in silence for a while. He wasn’t going to bother telling her that she couldn’t change the past. He’d heard about those time travel shenanigans the kids had gotten up to. He wasn’t going to ask her what she’d seen when she looked up all those old identities. He’d be happier if those things stayed blurred. He’d be happier if he could pretend she didn’t know.

Eventually Mabel rolled off Stan’s chest.

“Here.” She picked up the empty scrapbook and handed it to him. “It’s still for you. But it’s a future scrapbook now, and you have to fill it with good things!” A thought seemed to strike her, and she threw open her sticker folder, flipping through the pages until she announced, triumphantly, “A-ha!” and pulled out a sheet covered in sparkly smiling candies.

“I’ll help you start.” She peeled a sticker of a gently smiling marshmallow—where did the kid even get these things?—off its backing and stuck it to the middle of the first page. “There’s you.”

She settled, book and stickers in hand, back onto his lap. “Now we need your family. I’m your pumpkin, so let me find my squash stickers. What do you think Dipper should be? Maybe a kitten . . .”

Mabel leaned back, cushioning herself against Stan’s stomach. He watched, smiling, as she took the blank book and gradually, with his help, began to fill the first page in with glitter and happiness.


End file.
